Hi Stephen. Very well said! You've summed up so many of the things that I feel and the reasons that are driving some of the "marketing" efforts that I've take upon myself. Its something that I enjoy doing and that I know would help the project. And the cool thing with John is that he's VERY receptive to receiving help.
Things such as reporting jQuery news to the list, enhancing VisualJQuery.com, updating LearningjQuery.com or ensuring that Ajaxian or Agile Ajax know about jQuery initiatives are tasks that we can do and that frees up John to focus on solidifying the jQuery core. You're ideas are awesome and I really think you should discuss them with John and tell him how you feel you can contribute. He'll listen to you especially if you present him with a great idea. Rey... PS: If you have a good list of plugins, please consider offering that up. I think it would be a great addition to the jQuery website. Stephen Woodbridge wrote: > Rey Bango wrote: >> Hi Dan, >> >>> Still, I suppose if you make enough examples of everythin everyone else has >>> done, and then throw jQuery's own killer features, then we might get more >>> converts! :D >>> There's plenty of cool stuff out there that we should push more and more. >> Yep! See, part of my concern is that it seems that the other libraries >> get a ton more exposure than jQuery does so when someone creates a new >> whiz-bang page using moo or Prototype, it gives a ton of press to those >> libraries even though in many cases, jQuery has had those features for >> some time. So I think its important to empathize, in some tangible >> fashion, these capabilities especially to new visitors. I think the >> folks at Scriptaculous have done a really good job of this with their >> new site. > > This is in part that we are not well coordinated as a community and I > think we are going through some growing pains. In the month+ that I have > been playing with jQuery it seems like the list of new posters has more > than doubled. > > The one thing that I find very had about jQuery is that there are a lot > of person blogs and sites the contain a lot of the key information the > is required to learn it, but it is not always obvious where to go look > or how to find that information. We seem to have a lot of individual > contributors doing their own things for the community, but we don't seem > to have an organized community. If that makes sense. > > Some examples: > > I now bookmark every plugin reference, because there is no one single > place to find the plugins. There is a plugin section in svn, there is a > plugin page on the site, but many (most?) of the bookmarks are not > there. In fact I remember a post a short while ago about some plugin > getting lost because the site no longer existed. > > Some things we could do: create a contrib directory in svn the would > allow us to capture more of these plugins in an unsupported way. Write > up a simple standards doc for inclusion. Think of the Perl CPAN site as > an example. > > Make it easier to find the other sites that promote jQuery, like > visualjquery.com and learningjquery.com > > How can we better leverage the resources of the community? Like the > jQuery button contest, but also promoting jQuery with announcement every > time some creates a new plugin, or releases a site built on jQuery, etc. > Recruit someone to work on a site redesign if John would be up for > something like that. Personally, I would rather have John working on > jQuery core than spending a lot of time on a new website because with a > little guidance from John others could take that on and contribute to > the community. > > Things like the following and comparisons to other library features is > another thing the people from the community can work on as part of site > content. > >> Going along your comments, I think you're right that we need to clearly >> delineate whats already built-in to jQuery, what can be enhanced via a >> plugin, and what should be added to some best practices/demo page so >> that we're not constantly reinventing the wheel. I would just hate for >> someone to come by and say, "Well, jQuery doesn't seem to have this >> animation capability that I saw on Ajaxian" simply because its not >> obvious to them from what they see on the site. >> >> Rey... > > > Anyway, I do not mean for any of this to be taken as criticism, its more > an observation of where I think we are and what make sense to move it to > the next level. I'm new to jQuery and I may be totally off base. If that > is case please delete this and accept my apology. I think I hear a lot > of desire for this to happen in the form of the suggestions that are > focused on smaller tactical steps of trying to improve the doc or > tutorials, etc. These are all things that are important and need to be > done but I think a building and growing a community takes some planning > and coordination and some leadership and thinking big. > > One way to do this is for the leadership (whoever that may be) to think > about where they want this to go or what their vision is. Then identify > concrete tasks of things that need to be done and ask for volunteers to > work on them. I'm probably not say anything that you don't already know, > but I hope putting it into words generates some discussion and action > and provide a mechanism to focus community members on improving jQuery. > > I have to say that one of the better aspects of this community is the > list and the support I have gotten from it. It is a very positive and > instructive environment. > > Thanks and best regards, > -Steve > > _______________________________________________ > jQuery mailing list > discuss@jquery.com > http://jquery.com/discuss/ > _______________________________________________ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
